November 7, 2022

11:11

Marcela Leiros – AMAZON AGENCY

MANAUS – The Amazon leads the percentage of slum growth in the country, with 29.3% of urban expansion in informal areas, in the biome, in 37 years. The data are from the MapBiomas survey on urbanized areas, made from the analysis of satellite images captured between 1985 and 2021, and released this week. Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, is at the top of the ranking, with almost 10 thousand hectares.

The study showed that the informal areas, popularly called slums, totaled 106 thousand hectares, and most of the urbanized area in these locations is concentrated in the capital cities. Besides Manaus, another Amazon capital tops the list: Belém (PA) is in third place, with 5 thousand occupied hectares.

The data confirmed that 50% of the whole urbanized area in Subnormal Agglomerations (AGSN) – definition of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) for slums – is concentrated in 25 of the 738 mapped municipalities, and more cities from States in the Legal Amazon – Amazonas, Pará, Acre, Roraima, Tocantins, Rondônia, Mato Grosso, Amapá and Maranhão – occupy the list.

In sixth position is São Luís, in Maranhão; Ananindeua, in the interior of Pará, is in 11th position; Porto Velho, capital of Rondônia, is in 13th position; Santarém, capital of Pará, is in 17th position; José de Ribamar, also in Maranhão, is in 19th position; Cuiabá, capital of Mato Grosso, is in 21st position; and Palmas, capital of Tocantins, is in 24th position.

Read also: Childhood in poverty: children’s development is affected by lack of basic survival items

See the list below:

Risk areas

In the last 37 years, the urbanized areas in the country increased from 1.2 million hectares to 3.7 million, Mapbiomas pointed out. The satellite images also allowed us to identify that urban occupation as a whole in risk areas increased three times between 1985 and 2021, and in informal areas this advance was even greater: 3.4 times. Of every 100 hectares of shantytown, 15 were built in risk areas.

Of the 887 cities with some urbanized area in risk areas, only 20 cities account for 36% of all the risk area occupied in the last 37 years. Salvador (BA), Ribeirão das Neves (MG), Jaboatão dos Guararapes (PE), São Paulo (SP), Recife (PE) and Belo Horizonte (MG) are the first six on the list.

Read also: In Manaus, 41.8% of the population is in poverty; number is the highest in Brazil

Loss of vegetation

As for the biomes, the Cerrado leads the ranking with the largest increase in urbanized areas at risk, with 382%, followed by Caatinga, with 310%, Amazon, with 303%, Atlantic Forest, with 297%, Pampa, with 193%, and lastly the Pantanal, with 187%.

The States of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, located in the Atlantic Forest, have the two largest urbanized areas in the country and, together, have lost almost 38 thousand hectares of native vegetation: 26,655 ha and 10,982 ha, respectively.

See the study in full: